BlackRock‘s exchange traded fund unit, iShares, has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch another socially responsible ETF that excludes companies associated with countries that are known human rights violators.
According to the filing, the iShares Human Rights Index Fund will try to reflect the performance of the Human Rights Custom Index, a subset of the MSCI All Country World Index, which excludes companies that have economic associations with countries implicated in widespread death, torture, rape, slavery, forced labor and forced displacement of communities. Additionally, companies with economic association with repressive regimes, including Sudan, Iran and Burma, are excluded.
The fund will utilize a selective sampling technique to select from the 8,905 pool of securities from the original Index.
Under the pre-set criteria, potential companies may be selected from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Sector allocations include consumer staples, financials and information technology.
For more information on new launches, visit our new ETFs category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.
The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.